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In the UPSC interview (essentially a Personality Test), the ability to anticipate questions and choose the right words is crucial, and this skill largely stems from an understanding of culture and access to cultural capital from a sociological perspective.

The cultural capital of urban India is primarily composed of:

(i) Victorian morality:

Read about urban elite culture shaped by convent schools:

Constructing Post-Colonial India: National Character and the Doon School by Sanjay Srivastava (1998)

Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon by Sanjay Srivastava (2015)

(ii) Invisibilisation of caste and gender issues:

Read Dalit feminist literature to understand which questions or cues to navigate or dodge in the interview:

Karukku by Bama (1992)

I believe sociological understanding can unlock the power to navigate the subjectivity of the UPSC interview because it is not possible to change people's psyche in a day, and one needs to learn to negotiate within the given structure as a bureaucrat.

Social reform or deform is fundamentally the job of politicians and social reformers, which is outside the scope of bureaucracy.

From a psychometric perspective, the UPSC interview (Personality Test) is highly objective in nature, with roughly 20%–30% subjectivity.

This will always be tilted towards cultural capital, but it can still be considered fair.

The UPSC interview can distinguish slightly below-average candidates from good candidates, but it cannot reliably differentiate between good candidates and great candidates.

This is a typical limitation of any heavily centralised exam, so we cannot blame the UPSC for this, because no interview (Personality Test) can overcome the socio-linguistic barriers of a large country like India through a single test.

Refer to the article below for insights into the UPSC interview process, based on Prof.Vinay Nangia book Mastering the UPSC CSE Personality Test.
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Yash Pratap Author

Web Dev, System Design, AI
Indian Bureaucracy Problems

Part 1 : India is extremely diverse linguistically. Because of this diversity, a bureaucrat carries two burdens:

(i) doing the actual administrative job
(ii) understanding cultural and linguistic nuances well enough to negotiate with political leadership

This second part often gets ignored, but it has a huge impact on how effectively ideas move through the system or how things happen.

Fieldwork helps in understanding the words or sentences, but it is not enough to become articulate.

Articulation requires exposure to literature and culture — and articulation is what unites people and turns ideas into reality.

Because at the end of the day, even the best ideas depend on how well you communicate them in the language that people trust.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yashp2411_after-watching-anil-swarup-sir-in-few-podcasts-activity-7395476392932601856-I0f_

How Anil Swarup's Podcasts Taught Me About Communication | Yash Pratap posted on the topic | LinkedIn

After watching Anil Swarup sir in few podcasts, I realised that he doesn’t just talk about “good ideas” in the abstract — he talks about how ideas survive real-world constraints. He says that for an idea to actually work, it must be: politically...